Longstride

Today, I returned to New Mexico from Canada, and prepared to return to the trail tomorrow.

• Getting up at 2:30 am was rough, but required. After goodbyes to Fuck-It and Stumblebee, Recon and I were in an Uber and on our way to the airport twenty minutes later.
• Still being freakishly early in the morning, the airport lines were not open. Recon and I were two of the first to check our bags once they did open the lines. Then it was even more waiting for customs to open. Once it did, though, we made it through very quickly.
• Both flights were on-time or a little early. Baggage at Albuquerque was fast, already coming out the conveyor belt by the time we made it there.
• Recon quickly made his exit, getting a ride home with his dad. I began a long afternoon of chores.
• Being back in New Mexico was a little weird. The last time I was here, it was hot and dry. Now, there were clouds in the sky, and it was a little bit humid.
• I went to a Walmart to do my resupply. Apparently, I picked the wrong one, and they wouldn’t let me in because I had a backpack. (Apparently, they’d had a rash of shoplifting, and this is how they kept control.) That wasted half an hour and however much the Lyft cost me.
• I instead went to an Albertsons, completed my resupply there, and repacked everything into my pack outside the store. That took an hour.
• The plan is, five days to Ghost Ranch, where I'll pick up a resupply box. Then, three days to Cuba, and six days to Grants, via an alternate to summit Mount Taylor.
• My next stop was the post office, to send a resupply box to Ghost Ranch, and my Ursack home. (No grizzlies means I don’t need a food bag that weighs an extra pound and a half.)
• One last Lyft got me to the train station to get a train to Santa Fe, but a few minutes too late. I had to wait an hour for the next train, which got me to Santa Fe long after sunset. It rained a little while I was on the train.
• While waiting, I booked a room for tonight, reasonably conveniently located to the train station tonight and a bus station for tomorrow.
• In Santa Fe, I crossed the street from the train station to go to the REI, and picked up fuel, a food bag to replace the one that mice chewed through. I also got a replacement set of trekking poles, to replace mine that had been bent since southern Colorado. (More recently, one of the wrist straps had started to rip, and I didn’t want a repeat of the Canary Islands.)
• I checked into my motel, which was wildly overpriced for what it offered. (It was also hard to find the main entrance on foot.) I got dinner at their attached restaurant.

Tomorrow, I’ll take the bus to Chama, repeating my route from a little over four months ago. After that, I’ll be back on trail, with about 254 miles left to go to reach the Lava Flow Hostel in Grants. Just two more weeks, and then I’ll be done!